@Scribbler isn’t in the great ol’ US of A in case you haven’t figured that out yet. I’m in the same country, though half way across it, and have never heard of any places like that either.
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That’s what makes it so funny. It’s irrelevant whether another one like it exists. The idea that @Scribbler could reasonably expect to know if a similar facility existed in a country the size of Canada is patently ridiculous.
It struck my sense of the ridiculous this morning. I laughed and thanked the originator.
It’s still funny. Maybe I need some sleep. 
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Keep on laughing and hopefully have a good night sleep then. I was agreeing with Scribbler that they are not common in this country. There might be showgrounds (with stabling but only used during actual shows) that are owned by municipalities, but stabling that are owned like what she describes as where she is boarding are few and far between. Scribbler lives in BC, I live in Ontario, I’m almost as old as dirt and have never heard of a municipal owned stable in this province with full time boarding. I think there are enough COTHers to back that up.
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I’m younger than dirt, live in Ontario, and learned to ride at a municipality owned stable with full boarding. 
I wouldn’t expect anyone (general anyone who happens to live at the other end of the province) on the other side of the province, let alone either coast to have known about it.
It’s a very big country.
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Yes, I think that approach is probably just about right. I did actually see her this morning as she was at the barn getting ready to train a horse when I was arriving for my lesson with a different trainer. I saw her tacking up and said, “hey! I didn’t know you were going to be here. If I had, I would have brought you that gift I got for you…“ She looked at me with a dead face, and said, “oh yeah, thanks.” In a way that made it really clear that she wanted nothing to do with me. So this “professional“ is acting like a big baby, and is incapable of even pretending to be pleasant after what took place. I just went about my business, had my lesson and left.
That incredibly immature, unprofessional reaction really reinforced everything that everyone on this thread has said: that she is not worth working with, and is to be avoided.
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I definitely hear what you are saying, and I want to make it clear that I was not leading with the numbers. I was just shocked that on Sunday I was being offered a horse that I could ride four days a week that would cost me almost 50 K a year, and then the very next day I was being offered a horse of similar quality that I could ride four days a week for 32K a year. And the more expensive horse was at a barn where no one would be tacking my horse for me (I am 100% happy to tack my own horse and actually enjoy the entire process, I am just saying this is a service that the less expensive lease includes in their fees), so I was amazed that it was somewhat apples to apples, but 17K apart in price.
What made me object to the price of that initial lease situation was that my trainer couldn’t even tell me what the training packages were going to cost and I could already see that I was spending 40K on the horse, the board and the care. Now that I do actually have the numbers I see that that lease would’ve been close to 50K for the year, and that definitely would have robbed me of any opportunity to save to buy my own horse. And that was my objection. That she had, without giving me much detail around expenses, asked me to make a split second decision about a lease that was costing way more than I wanted to spend.
It’s all a little bit complicated, but this half lease that I am being offered is a horse that is stabled at a different barn with better services. My trainer is just not allowed to work there full-time, she only does cameo appearances there. She is a freelancer if you will. This new trainer with the half lease is a full-time employee of that barn, and when everything is rolled together, I am getting the same lease experience for dramatically less money. I hope that makes sense. I’m not walking around all the time talking about nothing but money. There are just a lot of factors and variables that made my “outside of the Barn staff“ trainer far more expensive to work with and lease from than the new situation that has been presented to me.
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I presume her reputation is pretty good, but in response to your earlier question my TB was boarded at a barn that was owned by that trainer’s ex-husband. Once he kicked her out, she became a freelancer, and now she does training rides and substitute teaches at the new barn where I am riding.
So while I have basically left her barn, I cannot quite escape her. She just teaches at different barns in the area so if I lease a horse, I am paying board to someone other than that trainer, and buying a lesson package from the person who owns that barn - I am not paying for them directly to the trainer. The trainer is getting paid out of the package that I have purchased from this other barn. That is why she could not tell me how much I would spend on training each month because she did not know if her training rides could come out of my lesson package. So she basically asked me to make this decision on Sunday without knowing how much I would be spending on training. And then she got mad at me for “not knowing what all this would cost.” It was kind of ridiculous, as there were serious blind spots around what the expenses would be. And I don’t care what anybody says, anyone who goes into any agreement not knowing what it will cost… I have a timeshare to sell you. (Just kidding here, of course! I’m just trying to point out how irresponsible it would be to sign a contract when you don’t know what things are going to cost.)
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Yes, the unsuitable horse was at a barn owned by the trainer that everyone is advising me to walk away from. She lost that Barn in the divorce, and I suddenly had to move which forced me to have to rehome my unsuitable horse much more quickly than I would have liked to.
But I trusted her, and wanted to continue to work with her. So I asked her to find me a new horse and said that I thought leasing might be a good idea for a while, since I had been so badly burned with the first horse. She asked me what my budget was and I said 7500–8000 for the horse. She introduced me to the horse which she said was 9000 but she was pretty sure I could get for 8000, and then on Saturday night when I got the contract, I learned that it was 10,250, and that I would no longer be able to share my training package with my son, and that she did not know if her training rides could come out of my training package, and that I needed to make a decision that very morning. So I could not get actual, hard costs for the training packages because the barn owner was at a show for the weekend, but I could already see I would be spending 40K, with an unknown variable for training. I felt rushed, uninformed, and concerned I was getting in over my head, and she was pressing me to sign. When I told her I needed her expertise and wasn’t sure this was the right decision for me, and that I was willing to pay her her 10% finders fee whether I went forward with the lease or not, she told me I was jeopardizing her reputation.
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I live in Onrario too. Probably an unpopular opinion, so zipping up the flame retardant suit… but as long as people are unhoused and trying to survive in tents, I don’t think any of our tax money should be used to support or subsidize elite sports such as riding, skiing, boating.
Having said that, I am not opposed to the use of municipal property leased for those purposes if they are self sustaining.
There used to be 2 stables on municipal property in Toronto. A riding school at the CNE (where thr Royal Winter Fair is held) and one at Sunnybrook Park,
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A sport is “elite” if it’s expensive. A sport is expensive if the participant needs to cover the whole cost in a for profit system.
When I was a child the only skating, swimming, tennis and golf opportunities were at Country Clubs or Winter Clubs. They were expensive; we joined the Winter Club for several years. More expensive than keeping my horse in self board.
Now hockey and skating are seen almost as a human right in Canada and Tim Hortons runs charities for No Child Left Behind/Out of Hockey. We have lower cost ski hills. We have so many public golf courses, the city wants to decommission some of them. The rec centers do free or low cost swimming skating fitness for low income families. Etc. These are all no longer seen as elite sports simply because they are made accessible to lower and average income people through municipal funding.
Horses got left out. Riders need to fund the full cost of the sport plus the salaries of their coaches, trainers, etc. Of course it’s going to get more expensive compared to the highly subsidized sports.
That said, I’ve been told that the cost to keep a horse at our barns ($250 rent plus feed, so about $500 a month) is about the same as having a child on a hockey team.
Riding wasn’t really elite when and where I was a kid. It was kind of a backwoods bad cowboy nuisance activity. 
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well that is a wide open approach, I have been in many nations where a soccer ball ($20?) is a luxury
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I don’t know how long you’ve been in horses, but this isn’t uncommon to encourage people to spend more money than they feel comfortable with–kind of like how when people see mysterious medication fees on board bills or opaque bills for shows and try to ask questions of the trainer, and then get shamed as someone who is trying to nickel and dime.
A lot of unethical trainers will just assume that if someone has a healthy budget for buying, leasing, boarding or showing a horse, they will just try to keep pushing the client to spend more money until the client says “no,” and clients often are too afraid (until they have spent $$$$ more than they ever wanted to and can’t afford) to raise their voices for fear of looking cheap. And when the client finally says “no” they get hurt that suddenly their best friend forever trainer is cold and distant.
I’m sure your trainer knew you’d prefer the cheaper horse, but it just wasn’t in her financial interest to offer that horse to you.
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My personal favorite is the surprise “laundry fee” that is tacked on to the monthly bill for laundering the horse’s saddle pad and wraps after the trainer rides it. Or maybe the trainer doesn’t actually ride it-- the working student (free labor) rides it or another student of the barn rides it and pays for the instruction on your horse. And then the outrage if the horse owner raises this as a problem, and you finally discover that you are not their friend, you are their customer and the customer is never right.
Don’t get me started.
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The laundry fee is a new one to me!
But yeah, not only IRL, but so many threads here of “I got charged for a training ride, but my friend saw it and it was a junior rider on my horse during a lesson instead.”
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This does not bother me if it is something I know about.
I think it is very useful for the trainer to see how the horse is going with a less accomplished rider on it. Usually that fine line of great enough rider but not as accomplished is one of the talented junior riders.
Right. But I have an issue if I’m charged for a training ride AND the rider is charged for a lesson. I wouldn’t give permission for that - but I might be fine with a talented junior riding my horse in a lesson if I got a free training ride out of it and knew about it.
Communication is key. That’s the theme of these threads.
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That’s my sense as well. Because she is cozy with the new trainer who offered me the less expensive half lease horse, I am sure she has now heard that I am more than happy to move forward with that situation because it’s going to keep 17 K in my pocket.
Look, I’m a businesswoman, too. And if I present a proposal to a client, and it’s more than they budgeted for, I don’t get my panties in a twist, storm off, and never talk to them again. Building a business is about building relationships. in that situation, I stopped and try to strategize with them to figure out how they can get what they want while I am still fairly compensated. And you know what? My clients love the flexibility, and it always works out in the end. They get what they want, I make money, and they continue to hire me into the future.
This woman has basically burned her bridge with me when she could have easily said, “Hey, I understand. Expenses really ballooned beyond what you were expecting so let’s tap the brakes and wait for something that fits your budget to come along.” But instead, she shamed me and told me I was ruining her reputation, and now is acting like a mean girl at the barn, pretty much assuring that I will never want to work directly with her again. That is just not smart business.
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Don’t take lessons with trainer #1 when your current trainer goes on maternity leave. Trainer #1 is going to undermine you or upcharge you. You can’t come back from how she’s treating you now, cutting you dead, and have her as a coach again.
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Time to move on and find a trainer that is more open minded and can create their reputation through their own actions and not worry about what clients do.
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Also not worth trying to be friends with, from what you’ve posted. Sounds as if basic cordiality will be a win-win with that one, as it will be exceeding expectations.
And entirely up to you to encourage it and maintain it. She will do the absolute minimum, and only to avoid trashing her reputation … with other people.
She’s vindictive. No fixing it, because vindictive people tend to enjoy vindictiveness and don’t wish to be fixed, imo.
Stay chill and it could be that by this time next year, she is no longer among your local population of trainers. You won’t be the only person with who she’s torched a bridge. I’d keep an ear open for news that she’s moved to another part of the country to start over with her training career, or is doing something else for a living.
Run. Don’t look back. (I know, already done. )
You are doing your best to treat her well, and she’s not doing the same for you.
Not everything she does is because of the divorce and losing her barn. I don’t expect everyone to be all sunshine-y when the tide is against them. But at the same time, adversity can show who people really are.
Also the reason she didn’t share ‘her expertise’ is likely because she doesn’t really have any to share. Sounds as if she hasn’t availed herself of mentorship and learning about success in a customer-oriented business.
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